Torture on death row

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

So they finally killed Jack Alderman after all. More than 33 years after his conviction for the murder of his wife, the whole time spent on Georgia's death row, he was executed last Wednesday despite frantic last-minute attempts to have him reprieved.

 

Alderman had claimed from the start he was innocent, even refusing to enter into plea bargains that would have spared his life, because that would have meant admitting his culpability. We shall never know whether he was guilty. His alleged co-conspirator, who gave evidence against him in return for a lenient sentence, 12 years, is long dead by his own hand. But his guilt or innocence doesn't matter. No one should be incarcerated for 33 years in the shadow of the execution chamber. It is an act of barbarism to keep any man in those conditions. Several eminent human rights lawyers have not hesitated to describe it as torture. The Privy Council, the final court of appeal for many Caribbean countries, ruled in a Jamaican case that keeping a man on death row for more than five years amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Alderman was, all agree, a model prisoner, a Christian, quiet and helpful, liked by fellow prisoners and prison staff. That too is irrelevant. The same would apply if he had been an unpleasant character, disliked by all.

 

His execution made no headlines in the American media, not even in Georgia. The short reports were matter-of-fact, with little suggestion that there was anything untoward about the case. Few in the US were interested in Jack Alderman's fate, and it was left to passionate British campaigners to raise Alderman's profile and bring his case before the courts and various state authorities. It didn't help him in the end, but at least British concern gave him a chance that American indifference had denied him. There, the prevalent attitude to lengthy stays on death row is that they are the fault of the prisoners. If they hadn't kept appealing against their convictions, pleading for mercy and raising all sorts of other issues about their incarceration or methods of execution (such as the recent challenge against lethal injection), they could have been executed years and years before.

 

For once, a mention of diversity in the judiciary is not accompanied by a whinge about the under-representation of women or the ethnic minorities. The news is that the court of appeal of England and Wales has its first openly gay judge, Sir Terence Etherton, who has just finished a stint as chairman of the Law Commission. Two years ago he was the first high court judge publicly to announce his entering into a civil partnership. The other known gay high court judge, Sir Adrian Fulford, is now a judge at the international criminal court in The Hague. But lest you get the idea that England is in the forefront of this aspect of progressive diversity, far from it. Probably Australia's best-known judge and member of its highest appeal court, Justice Michael Kirby, is gay; and, on South Africa's supreme court, Justice Edwin Cameron has admitted having HIV/Aids.

 

NJo point in bringing this up in electioneering

[Duncan Disorderly]

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[Guest Ant]

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[Des]

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[ChrisC]

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[Sion]

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